CONTACT NETWORK HISTORY PROJECT
Joseph Burkes MD 1994 edited 2022
CONTACT DOWNLOADS, A FORM OF CHANNELING
In February of 1994, two weeks after the Great Northridge Quake I subjectively acquired the following information. The experience that I describe occurred in a stereotypical fashion. It happened at the end of a solo meditation. The emotional power of what I believe was a consciousness-mediated communication was so great that for over two decades strong emotions stirred within me each time I described it to others. Over the years I have thought of these happenings as a form of channeling. In 2013 Linda Irwin of the Facebook page “The Unseen World” described them to me as “contact downloads.”
The theme of my 2-1-94 “download” felt so important, and the emotional tone of the experience was so vital that I was compelled to speak to other volunteer contact workers about it. Alex Ayres was a very psi capable member of my Los Angeles based CE-5 Initiative team. He was a Harvard graduate that worked as a writer and producer in Hollywood. He confirmed that he experienced “channeling” in ways very similar to mine. The message came in as a kind of matrix. Several complex ideas took shape in an outline form. Within less than a minute that matrix was filled in by details provided by my own consciousness. Alex said it was if he were receiving “packets of information.” I imagined that the mechanism was analogous to using a Venus Coloring Set that many in my generation played with as children. The basic outline of the message was given me and all I had to do was color in the details.
EGO BASED FANTASY, OR SOMETHING MORE PROFOUND?
One might reasonably ask whether this “subjectively acquired material” was merely ego-based fantasy. I can’t state with absolute certainty that this event and many similar ones recurring in a stereotypical fashion over a two-year period were not created by my imagination. I can state with confidence that the contact networks that I have worked with, the North American one, CE-5 (Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind) and the South American based Mission Rama, have both successfully used psi to facilitate many encounters with non-human intelligence of a presumed ET nature. I am convinced that this project, (communicating with UAP intelligence) is so important that contact activists should not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal including psi mediated ones.
PERHAPS THEY ARE EXPERIMENTING ON US.
The contact download of 2-1-94 started after I had completed a routine meditation. The word “experiment” came into my mind. I recalled this term being used by CE-5 activists when discussing why extra-terrestrials might engage in CE-4s aka “abductions.” Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind in my view is a better term than “alien abductions” to describe people having memories of being onboard what they imagine are ET spacecraft. This is because no one truly knows what so-called “alien abductions” truly are. This was the position of the late Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack. Are they exclusively physical events? If this is so, why are there so few witnesses other than those targeted in these encounters? Are “abductions” primarily psychic events, taking place in a “Matrix” like virtual reality?” There is much testimony from the FREE Experiencer Survey to support this mechanism. It should be acknowledged that in occasional CE-4s, individuals go missing, and later return. This suggests that in some cases there are strong physical elements.
The notion that “they” (whatever the so called “visitors” eventually turn out to be) are physically taking selected individuals onboard their craft, is understandably quite bewildering if not outright frightening to people. Calling such disturbing encounters an “experiment” might be viewed as a way of perhaps excusing such acts as part of some “noble cause of alien science.”
As part of this channeling experience, I first visualized an ordinary lecture hall with several volunteer contact workers standing around chatting at the front of the room. Shari Adamiak was in this “awake dream.” She was the coordinator of all the CE-5 Working Groups back in the 1990s. Shari was the one that suggested “experimentation” might be the motivation behind some people being taken onboard “ET craft.”
A “ZETA” FEMALE APPEARED
As these thoughts were being “downloaded” into my consciousness, I got the impression that the source was an ET female. Perhaps she was one that I might even have an ongoing “relationship” with. She appeared in my mind’s eye to be a so-called “Zeta” type of being. That alleged race of extraterrestrials according to many UFO aficionados originates from a star system called Zeta-Reticuli, about 40 light-years from Earth.
This aspect of UFO lore comes from the Betty and Barney Hill case whose story of an alleged onboard encounter with aliens is described in the classic book, “Interrupted Journey.” Betty was later able to draw a star map that she reportedly was shown after she asked from where her “ET hosts” came. This map was then used to search a multitude of actual astronomical configurations to see if a match could be found. Success was declared when the binary system of Zeta Reticuli reportedly fit the pattern Betty had remembered.
IT FELT AS IF THIS BEING KNEW ME WELL
I thought that the female non-human being might even be of mixed human-ET ancestry. I perceived her emotions telepathically. She was not unfriendly, but I sensed that she was offended to the point of being indignant concerning the use of the word “experiment.” It was if she was saying, “You people, you humans, call our encounters ‘experiments.’ Well, let me tell you a thing or two.” The next packet of information was reminiscent of material that contactee John Salter received during an alleged friendly on-board encounter with ETs in 1988. In my mind’s eye I was shown a kind of star map that traced the course of an extended migration through space. At the level of knowledge, I became aware of a massive exodus that lasted a very long time, generations, perhaps even centuries.
The tone of her presentation was somewhat didactic. I sensed however an undercurrent of irritation, perhaps even scorn. I imagined her saying, “It took us a very long time to get here, (meaning Sol’s star system) and it required much personal and collective sacrifice.” I got the impression she was referring to the loss of numerous spacecraft with many of her people dying.
MY STORE OF MEMORIES WERE INCORPORATED INTO THE NARRATIVE.
The awake dream continued with the ET female stating. “For us our arrival to your star system was like being reborn.” The harsh cold conditions of deep spaceflight were replaced with a chance for a new life on a warm beautiful planet, the one, “You humans call Earth.”
I was aware that my store of memories was being incorporated into the “awake dream.” In my mind’s eye I saw a “Zeta” child dancing around a maypole in New York’s Central Park. The images were so crisp and powerful that I have no difficulty recalling them over 29 later. At the level of knowledge, I knew it was early springtime. The scene unfolded near the carousel where my parents used to take me. Holding the ribbon as he danced, a sun shower poured cold rain down upon a little grey being with wrap around eyes.
The ET female continued her discourse. She explained that her people were here to assist our less advanced civilization during a critical transition time in our evolutionary development. Her tone changed from stern to sardonic. “You humans think you are so special, but you’re not.” Now almost coyly she added. “We’ve been this way with others.”
A MOST PASSIONATE FORM OF NON-HUMAN LOVE
I became aware that this was the proud history of her people. They travelled through space, from one star system to another one. Their mission was a peaceful one. They offered help to many planets in need. In no uncertain terms, I was informed that this was a religious duty for them, one that they willingly embraced no matter what the cost. The emotional power of her communication increased. She was clearly expressing outrage, and I understood it to be a most passionate form of love. I recoiled from the emotional torrent emanating from her whole being. I was bent over in shame as this physically frail non-human female, blasted her telepathic message into my mind.
“So don’t tell me this is an experiment!
THIS IS THE HISTORY OF OUR PEOPLE!
THIS IS HOW WE EXPRESS OUR SOLIDARITY WITH OTHER RACES OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS!
THIS IS HOW WE EXPRESS OUR DEVOTION TO GOD!
SO DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME THIS IS AN “EXPERIMENT!”
I recall reacting to this final part of the message, by pleading something like,
“Oh I am so sorry, please forgive us. Please, kind lady, please don’t be so angry with me.”
For reasons that I have trouble understanding, this message had such power over me that for twenty plus years, I had difficulty telling it to others without tears forming.
In the spring of 2014, I attended a meeting in Roswell of fellow authors that contributed to the Jeff Becker’s book, “Paths to Contact.” There over dinner, I shared the contents of this “awake dream” with Martin Chicoine from French Canada who also wrote a chapter in Jeff’s anthology. There was just the two of us at the table. Sure enough right on schedule, as I came to the end of the story, as it happened so many times before, I got all choked up and the tears started to form. I managed to finish, however, without overtly crying. Martin gently observed that, “The ETs really know how to push our emotional buttons.” I couldn’t agree with him more.
Addendum: I should add how my perspective on the experience has changed over the next three decades. After I resigned from CSETI in 1998 and was no longer an organizer of teams that were staging Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE) aka CE5, I studied the books of John Keel and Dr. Jacques Vallee. I realized that the ET explanation was wanting. Dr. Vallee wrote that the beings that experiencers were interacting with behaved more like visitors from “other dimensions” than from other star systems. This in combination with my understanding of the what I call the “Virtual Experience Model” put into question my most cherished beliefs about who and what the intelligence was that I had so passionately pursued during my “tour of duty” in the CE-5 Initiative.
The strong emotional ties however never dissolved completely. The fondness for my contact experiences that I had was still associated with a childlike sense of wonder, albeit less intensely. After all, the passage of time causes these changes, I imagine, on many other powerful emotions of young and middle adulthood.
About the Author: Joseph Burkes MD is a Board-Certified Internal Medicine physician licensed to practice in California. He retired from the Southern California Permanente Group after 30 years of service in 2008. During the 1960s through the 1980s he was a volunteer peace and social justice activist working with Physicians for Social Responsibility, The United Farm Workers Union and pro-labor coalitions that were part of the occupational health and safety movement.
Dr. Burkes volunteered as a Working Group Coordinator for the Close Encounters of the 5th Initiative from 1992 till 1998. He continued to studying the flying saucer phenomenon working with the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences(FREE) and the Peruvian contact network now called Rahma.
Joseph Burkes MD is co-author of the book “Paths to Contact” edited by Jeff Becker. He also has co-authored a chapter on UAP associated medical healings with researcher Preston Dennett in the FREE anthology “Beyond UFOs” edited by Rey Hernandez. In 2022, the Consciousness and Contact Research Institute (CCRI) published a multivolume compendium titled “A Greater Reality” also edited by Rey Hernandez. Dr. Burkes’ chapter is “REPORT FROM THE CONTACT UNDERGROUND: HUMAN INITIATED CONTACT, THE CONSCIOUSNESS CONNECTION AND THE VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE MODEL.” This article is available as a free pdf. file at:
The first two volumes of “A Greater Reality” can be read at the CCRI web site:
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